6. Girls

Before Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy even debuted, it was hard to separate Girls the show from Girls the media phenomenon: the swirl of attention around the 26-year-old creator/director/star; the show’s depiction of a lily-white Brooklyn; the show’s frank, awkwardly funny depictions of sex (and the sometimes sexist criticism of same); the argument over whether the show was a depiction of hipster privilege or a product of it; the backlashes and counterbacklashes. Clear that all away, though, and you had the year’s freshest new comic voice, raunchy, raw and tender at once. Dunham’s antiheroine Hannah Horvath wasn’t always easy to love, but this Williamsburg bildungsroman found a heart beneath its overeducated characters’ defenses. (HBO)